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PaperclipPerfector  13hr ago (text post)   1765 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 5, 2026

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I am genuinely surprised that the polls insist on a Democrat sweep at this stage.

The Trump administration has been extraordinarily chaotic. And dysfunctional. Also war.

Chaotic, maybe. Dysfunctional, hardly. You couldn't have asked for better performance on the core goal of the administration. They have completely closed the border and have deported 1 million people, accelerating over time. No one could have predicted that level of success. IMO, they earn an A+ on that issue, and it's the most important issue.

Deporting 1 million people in 1-2 years sounds like a success until you consider that somewhere between 5 and 20 million people entered under Biden. So at best he's falling short of reversing the change wrought by the previous admin and at worst he's bailing water from the lifeboat with a spoon. That's assuming you only care about illegal migration specifically; if you have a problem with H1Bs then it's even worse than that.

What are you even talking about? He has cracked down on H1Bs as well. You just want the impossible.

Second most important. The most important always will be cost of living. And the only way I could characterize the Trump foreign policy signature issue - tariffs is difunctional.

Immigration is by far the most important for Trump (and also for me and the health of the country).

Though people might say affordability is the most important, it was always a fake crisis that the party out of power uses as a cudgel for the party in power. Except for a couple years during the Biden admin, real wages have gone up consistently. But people's expectations go up faster thanks to Instagram and other comparison tools.

And of course the usual solution to "affordability" is to subsidize demand or to rob Peter to pay Paul, which just makes the problem worse.

I know that it's still important for Trump to acknowledge the retarded demands of the people. It's just that, in 5 years, no one will remember that gas was $1 higher than normal for a sixth month period. But immigration, if left to continue unabated, will permanently ruin the country.

I’m going to somewhat disagree. There are a lot of affordability issues, especially for young adults. That’s a bit harder to pick up on because when you aggregate everyone in the workforce, you capture the big raises that go to some sectors of the economy and not the stagnation in others. You also capture a COL that can miss that some things have gone up massively while others have not.

If you’re in your twenties, the things that have gone up in cost (for example homes) are things that matter a lot to you, and that take up a bigger chunk of your potential budget. In the case of homes, you also don’t have a home to sell to raise money for that home. If im trading a house for a bigger house, I only need to come up with the money to afford the increase, I already have a house to sell. If you move on to groceries, an increase of ten percent is going to be huge if groceries are 15% of the budget.

I agree with you. Doesn't change the fact that USA is unfortunately functioning democracy and people are swayed by the strain on their wallets. If Trump manages to hold to some legislative power he may as well be celebrated as visionary 20 years down the line - especially when we see what joy and benefits diversity brings on France's streets now. But doesn't change that winning elections in democracy is not optional.

Compared to Trump 1 this has been a positively stoic 2 years, with plenty of policy wins racked up.

I simply disagree.

The War is baked in, but as stated, gas prices have actually been on the downward trend, which is the main day-to-day reminder of the war.

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